A Southern Man Tells Better Jokes

I have such an affection for a Southern-style of life. I'm talking taking a hollow-wheel pickup to the local store, spreading chicken feed on a farm, three-wheeling in the woods, dirt bike racing, and being able to stare up at the stars from a porch with nothing around for miles. Someday, I hope to drive my RV all over the country following the NASCAR circuit. I want to have a '77 Nova in starlight blue parked in the barn next to my tractor. But I will never give up my heels...ever. I can do all those things in them...and if there's mud, there's always Frye boots.

What's odd though, is that I grew up with concrete. My first house on Forbell Street in East New York, Brooklyn, maybe had one tree on the block. I spent most of my years on 77th Street in Ozone Park where I vividly remember the day the Parks Department came and planted trees in front of each row house stoop. They looked like sticks, held up by other sticks. I don't ever remember seeing leaves. We had a yard, but it was Astroturfed.

When my parents took the family upstate on a trip to the Catskills, my sister and I were in awe of the mountains. We went on a kids outing with the hotel to a bowling alley and I remember being on the bus and the other kids started moaning about how they smelled manure. We figured it out from the odor, but we had never heard that word before.

Later that year, when I was twelve, we moved to the "country" to a small town called Montgomery in Orange County, New York. I hated it. Oddly I didn't feel safe. I was scared of the vastness, but I didn't feel secure in Queens either since our home was broken into while we were there. I also didn't like the way the locals said "orange" and "banana." There was a twang to it, and I didn't understand why since we were further north. Something happened, albeit briefly, that I started to tell my parents that I didn't like the South or Southerners, and I honestly don't know why. It may have had something to do with a girl who had just moved from Tennessee and was new at my school. I didn't like her...but I can't remember why.

I eventually went to college further upstate, but then moved back down to Brooklyn, my birthplace, where I still live and where I dream of driving a '54 Chevy truck. I am engaged to a Southern man who was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and spent most of his life in Savannah, Georgia. I am a member of Earnhardt Nation and I think Cooley is a stand-out on the new Drive-By Truckers record...but I do wish Isbell was still in the band, though "Chicago Promenade" off of his solo album gives me chills.

I'm getting hitched in the French Quarter of New Orleans and I love reading this Kentucky man's blog who I don't even know. My neice's name is Tennessee and she is the most amazing being I have ever met. To see her grow and learn with my own eyes is bigger than Jesus, and it taught me that there are things in this life that really don't matter and there are other things that really really do.


*Art by Wes Freed. He's amazing.